


If At First

by rain_sleet_snow



Series: If At First You Don't Succeed [1]
Category: Primeval
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Past Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-16
Updated: 2015-01-16
Packaged: 2018-03-07 21:03:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3183074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An Egyptologist and museum employee meets an emotionally wrecked PhD candidate and former shady government project member. It’s (not) love at first sight, Stephen is (not) equipped to handle affection, and Sarah is (not) prepared to let him go without a fight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If At First

**Author's Note:**

> A challenge teamfest fic for Sarah – using auntypam’s prompt ‘Sarah/Stephen: Nick said Stephen would have liked Sarah’, except that it went seriously off-piste. Thanks to Luka for the beta. AU from about 2x06: assume that Stephen snapped and declared a moratorium on all Cutters after Nick’s punch, and go from there!

            The first time Stephen saw the woman, she was sitting at the only remotely free table in the university library, chewing the end of a pencil and frowning at a book. He looked around again, just to make sure there weren’t any tables with nobody on them, briefly considered going back to his flat, and then decided to bite the bullet.

 

            He marched over and stood opposite the woman. “Is this space free?”

 

            “Sure,” she said, giving him a quick, glancing smile but otherwise totally ignoring him.

 

            He sat down and got on with his work.

 

***

 

            The second time he saw her, she was in the cafeteria, juggling three files, several books and a lunch-tray. She was about to drop all of them; he caught the tray as the thing most likely to cause extreme annoyance.

 

            She smiled at him and bought him a coffee as a thank-you, and he binned the tasteless remains of his sandwich and went on his way. This time, quick brown eyes and a wry mouth stuck in his mind and wouldn’t go away, and – standing on a crowded Tube with some kids laughing and joking and pretending they were tough stuff, making Stephen wish they’d known some of the real tough guys he had worked with at the ARC – Stephen wondered why the hell he hadn’t asked for her name.

 

            Too many years of Cutterish seclusion had obviously done their work, he thought to himself, and was in a foul mood for the rest of the day.

 

***

 

            The third time – well, it was cold and raining outside, and he had some time on his hands, and he’d never actually been to the famous Ancient Egypt exhibition at the British Museum. It came as something of a shock when he saw the woman from the university leading a group of kids around the exhibits, pausing occasionally to explain various aspects of Ancient Egyptian life.

 

            Stephen tried to tag along unobtrusively, examining the exhibits closely while eavesdropping on the woman’s speeches. He wasn’t very sneaky, but she seemed wrapped up in her subject and hopefully she wouldn’t notice.

 

            She was getting really into the swing of it, Stephen realised, and grinned at the chorus of disgust as she went into the bloodthirsty details of Ancient Egyptian embalming.

 

            He drifted along in the wake of the tour group, detaching completely as their teachers thanked – Dr Page? – for her fascinating tour, and lingering over a case of talismans found in mummy wrappings.

 

            “Boo,” a voice said behind him, and he started and whirled to face Dr Page, who was grinning at him.

 

            “Come here often?” she said, leaning against the display case. Her tone was casual, but there was a slight edge to it.

 

            He grinned sheepishly and rubbed the back of his head, looking away from her. “No. I’ve never been to the British Museum before. I didn’t know you worked here. _Do_ you work here?”

 

            “They let me have access to some artefacts for the research I’m doing, and as you’ve just seen, I give tours. Who are you?”

 

            “My name’s Stephen. I’m finishing my PhD.” There were huge gaps in that summation of himself, most of them covered by the Official Secrets Act, but it would probably do.

 

            “In what?”

 

            “Evolutionary zoology.”

 

            “Hm.” There was a long pause, and then Dr Page straightened up and put her hands in her pockets. “Look, I accept that it was a genuine accident, but do you see how this could seem kind of...”

 

            “Creepy?” Stephen filled in, wincing. “Yeah. I do. I’m really sorry.” He shifted. “I’ll go away. I only wanted to look at the Ancient Egypt exhibit, anyway.”

 

            “Fine.” Dr Page gave him a crooked smile. “Just... don’t do it again.”

 

            “I won’t. I swear.” Stephen moved towards the exit. “I’m sorry,” he repeated, knowing he was flushed red with embarrassment.

 

            “It’s all right.” Dr Page shrugged. “Could’ve happened to anyone, I suppose.”

 

            Stephen ducked his head awkwardly, turned, and walked away as quickly as possible.

 

            _Fucked up again, Hart._

 

***

 

            Stephen spent the next two weeks consciously avoiding the places he’d met Dr Page. He took books out of the library and photocopied articles rather than work in the library itself, he never ate at the university cafeteria and he didn’t go near the British Museum. He spent almost the entire time working, trying to get his stupidity out of his head. What little time wasn’t spent working, sleeping or getting takeaways and microwaveable meals that could be eaten standing up in a hurry, he spent dodging the phone-calls and emails the anomaly team still sent him.

 

            Well, a given definition of the anomaly team, anyway.

 

            Stephen’s departure from the team had been precipitous. Cutter had punched him and fired him, and hadn’t contacted him since. Stephen had gone home, thrown Helen out of his flat in order to get some thinking space, and hadn’t seen her again. He’d spent a day disconnecting his internet, ditching his mobile phone and generally shutting up shop, and had then made scratch arrangements for a month-long walking tour around the further reaches of Scotland.

 

           It had done him no end of good. The space and peace had been unbelievable, the closest he’d got to solace since he’d met the Cutters. The weather was crap, but he didn’t care. The surroundings were beautiful; he minded about that. He helped out an old friend with an adventure holidays business for a week, spent two days assisting the coastguard who had a small beached-whale problem, and generally wandered. He remembered what it was like to actually live, free of Cutter angst and baggage whether it came from Helen _or_ Nick, free of the stifling secrecy of the anomaly project, and he went home with a fresh sense of purpose and some very detailed plans.

 

           Stephen wasn’t much for buying things and the salary from the ARC had been excellent money compared to what he’d earned as Nick’s assistant; he had easily enough money to choose what to do next. He contacted CMU and took his long-dormant PhD out of Nick’s hands – a word behind the scenes to an old Evolutionary Zoology colleague who had gone from CMU to UCL established him at UCL, with a new supervisor and a job as a teaching assistant. Helen, Nick and Connor all knew where his flat was, so he stopped renting it and picked out a new one in London. He bought a new, basic mobile phone, changed his email address, and deleted his hardly-used Facebook account. He did everything he possibly could to leave the anomaly project behind, but they’d still found him.

 

            Stephen had no landline, so how they found him he never knew, but James Lester had called him on his mobile phone, brisk, cool and business-like. Lester wanted to know if he would like the things he’d left behind in his locker. Stephen told him he could shove the locker up his arse, dart-gun and all. Lester said that he took that as a ‘no’ and never called Stephen again, which was how Stephen liked it. Connor and Abby, however, were more persistent: Connor somehow found his new email address and proceeded to send him irregular, short, badly-spelt emails, updating him on life, the universe and everything. Abby’s emails were more regular and thoughtful, but Stephen could read the echoes of betrayal in them. Even Jenny had emailed him once – just once – to ask if he knew what he was doing to Nick. Stephen had let that one go unanswered, and had gone out and got completely hammered. Now he let the emails go straight to his spam box, but he still opened them and read them, as if he wanted to know how badly he’d screwed up, as if he wanted to wallow in the guilt of his betrayal - even though he’d been punched and fired, he still felt like he’d betrayed them. As if he wanted to remember all the wrong things he’d done, even though he’d stripped back the rotten layers of his life and disinfected them, even though he’d moved away and made a fresh start and ditched the old secrets and he was _better_ , now.

 

             Better, except that he still fucked up. He’d actually found someone he was attracted to who was nice and normal and interesting and not a Cutter, and even after only three brief meetings, all of them accidental, he’d managed to freak her out completely.

 

             Stephen, fidgeting with his feet under his kitchen table like a dissatisfied child and failing to concentrate on his work, managed to flip a chair on the opposite side of the table onto its back. He swore and got up to replace it.

 

            No wonder Dr Page thought he was a fucking weirdo and a stalker.

 

***

 

           “I don’t know about you,” Ursula said, eyeing the dregs of her coffee critically, “but I’d quite like to be followed around by hot men. _Was_ he hot?”

 

           “Smoking,” Sarah said truthfully, tossing back her own espresso. “Really tall, athletic-looking, messy brown hair, the most gorgeous blue eyes – and he has a _really_ sexy smile. When you haven’t caught him following you around a museum exhibit. It was just a bit... weird, you know, him turning up like that? I mean, he said it was an accident, he was very sweet about it, and it was kind of a knee-jerk reaction, but I feel like you can’t be too careful.”

 

          “Have you checked with the university if there’s a postgrad student in Evolutionary Zoology called Stephen?” Ursula said, voice redolent with common sense as ever. She was Sarah’s favourite colleague at the museum; they regularly got together to bitch about Marion, the caretakers, and thoughtless visitors. Sarah’s personal favourites were those who asked her where she was _originally_ from, and on hearing that the answer was the maternity ward at Guy’s, proceeded to ask if her family was from Egypt and (for bonus points!) if that was why she studied Ancient Egypt.

 

          Sarah nodded. “Yes. He checks out. But...” She trailed off, and stared away from the café into the distance, chewing her lower lip. After a minute, she shook her head, and focussed back on Ursula, who was looking at her with a little sympathy and a  lot of amusement. “It doesn’t matter; I haven’t seen him for weeks anyway.”

 

         “Aww,” Ursula said, evidently disappointed. “Well, if you see him, do give him my number.”

 

          “Really?” Sarah said dubiously, arching an eyebrow. Ursula’s relationship history was full of excitement, and tended to make Sarah feel like a withered spinster; she was highly glamorous, with a confident, friendly air that made you want to get to know her, and Sarah had briefly considered asking her out before realising she was straight. “I thought you’d decided: no blind dates, no dating people you haven’t got to know a bit, and... you had a list, didn’t you? A list of – required traits, or something.”

 

           Ursula gave her a filthy grin. “If he’s as pretty as you say he is, darling, I won’t want him to talk.”

 

          “Ursula!” Sarah shrieked, but laughed as well, both of them dissolving into the kind of sniggers that would have had Marion glaring at them as if they bore sole responsibility for the moral degeneration of today’s youth.

 

           Eventually they calmed down, and Ursula realised they had fifteen minutes before they had to be back at the museum, so Sarah called for the bill. On the way back to the museum, Sarah found her mind drifting back to Stephen – Stephen Hart, or possibly Steven Millington; both were PhD students in Evolutionary Zoology and Sarah had no idea which one the man she’d met was.

 

          “He was,” she said suddenly.

 

           “Who was what?” Ursula demanded, marching purposefully along the London pavement.

 

          “Stephen,” Sarah elaborated. “You said if he was as pretty as I said he was, you’d want him. Well, he was. He was sort of... unconsciously hot, if you know what I mean. Like he didn’t know how he looked – no, more like he didn’t value his looks. And he seemed sad.”

 

           Ursula stopped. Sarah stopped with her. “What? What did I say?”  


           Ursula was looking at her kindly. “You don’t think you might be reading a little too much into this? You know? Just a little?”

 

           Sarah ran back over her past few sentences in her head, and snorted. “Maybe?”

 

           “That’s what I thought. Come on. Marion awaits!”

 

***

 

           Sarah finally saw Stephen (or Steven?) again a full week after her conversation with Ursula. He was sitting at a table tucked into the corner of the library, immersed in his work. He looked bloody gorgeous, as ever. He also looked bloody lonely.

 

           Sarah bit her lip, glanced at the articles in her hands, and weighed up the benefits of going home to study and eat cold takeaway or staying here and studying, with no food but potentially excellent company. After a moment, she took her courage in both hands and advanced, dumping her laptop bag and articles down on the free space on the table.

 

           “Is anyone sitting here?” she asked.

 

           Stephen/Steven started and stared up at her. “Um... no,” he said after a second, a tiny smile curving at the corner of his mouth.

 

           “Good,” Sarah said, sitting down. Her heart was in her mouth; she made a determined attempt to stuff it back down her throat to where it couldn’t do any harm. “I think we got off on the wrong foot before, by the way. My name’s Sarah. Sarah Page.”

 

            “I’m Stephen,” Stephen/Steven said, the tiny smile blossoming into a full-blown, disbelieving grin. “Stephen Hart.”

 

***

 

             The friendship they struck up was casual and comfortable, but always with an edge of promise. They kept it, for the moment, to colonising a table in the library where they could work together, because their work patterns complemented each other (Stephen’s diligence made Sarah keep to the point, and Stephen remembered they needed food when Sarah was too blind with pharaohs to cope with the modern day), and to friendly lunches in the cafeteria and outside the university. Sarah had much more small talk than Stephen did, and could relax and be frivolous much more easily, but had strong opinions on a number of the more serious matters Stephen was slightly obsessed with, like environmentalism, and both of them enjoyed a good debate. There was something about talking to Stephen, too; once they got into each other’s orbit, Sarah had a hundred things to say to him, and they started talking and didn’t stop until interrupted. He never stopped being interesting, and he seemed to Sarah to get more good-looking as the weeks and months passed and he grew more comfortable in her company. She got more of his unguarded smiles, and started telling dirty jokes and noting accidental innuendos more often just to see him smirk; the expression in question would have had entire rows of undergraduates fainting with lust. (As it was, Sarah noticed, the lectures he took were spectacularly well-attended.)

 

             She told Ursula only a tiny part of this, and Ursula still laughed her head off and bet Sarah she’d be screwing him before the end of the year, but Sarah had her own doubts. Stephen was friendly, personable, funny in a surprisingly dry sort of way, interesting and intelligent; he was also shy, and he seemed to have issues he wasn’t telling her about. She relayed her observation about the attendance records at his lectures, and he flushed and muttered, but looked discomfited rather than embarrassed or pleased; he never mentioned a girlfriend or boyfriend, or any exes at all. Nor did he talk about family or friends. Sometimes, in particularly unguarded moments, he’d let something slip about people called ‘Connor’, ‘Jenny’ and ‘Abby’ who Sarah had never met, but then he’d clam up as if reminded of something horrible that had happened. He made few friends, although he was well-liked by the people he knew at the university. Sarah really wanted to know who’d put him off human company and appreciation so thoroughly: she would have quite liked to have throttled them, and not just because they were seriously impeding her sex life.

 

             Generally speaking, Sarah was worried about him, and somehow managed to combine fancying the pants off him with serious concern for his welfare and a dim conviction that leaping feet-first into a relationship would do neither of them any good. So she kept an eye on him, enjoyed her conversations with him and one day asked – quite without thinking – if he’d like to go to the new movie about Cleopatra that was coming out, because she was dead certain a) that it was going to be awful and b) that she was going to have to answer a lot of questions on it on her museum tours.

 

             Stephen hardly hesitated when he said yes, and even offered to pick her up from the museum to go to the cinema. Sarah was so pleased that she hadn’t managed to shock him back into shyness that she totally forgot that Ursula would doubtless be present, and would probably say something that would definitely shock Stephen back into shyness.

 

              As it happened, on the day Ursula was reasonably civilised, confining herself to a lascivious wink that made Sarah and Stephen blush, glance at each other and grin. The film, however, made up for Ursula’s deficiencies by being completely and utterly irredeemable.

 

             The acting was appalling, with the exception of the teenager playing Octavian who had exactly five minutes’ screen-time and spent most of it trying to carry the movie, the sets and costumes were worthy only of sniggering, the sex scene between Cleopatra and Julius Caesar had both of them weeping with laughter, and Stephen pointed out in a voice that was slightly too loud that if Mark Antony had ever hunted a hippopotamus like _that_ he wouldn’t have survived to screw Cleopatra. Sarah, who was in a position to recognise all the historical screw-ups, muttered explanations of every last one to Stephen. They laughed at all the bits that were not supposed to be funny, and Sarah wouldn’t have been at all surprised if they were thrown out, but they weren’t. They staggered out clutching each other, crying with hysterical laughter.

 

             “That was bloody awful,” Stephen gasped, leaning against a wall and wiping his face.  

 

              “Oh god I _know_ ,” Sarah said breathlessly, and paused for a fit of the giggles. “Do you remember – when she...” She made some vague hand-gestures and they both burst into howls of laughter again.

 

               Some of the punters filtering out of the cinema theatre gave them filthy looks.

 

              “I think they all hate us,” Sarah observed, composing herself.

 

              Stephen nodded. “Come on, let’s go,” he said, and actually caught hold of her hand to pull her out of the cinema.

 

              Sarah nearly gasped, and then she noticed his hands: strong and quite broad, with long, elegant fingers and callouses that she somehow didn’t think came from finishing off his PhD. He let go of her hand once they were out of the cinema and away from disapproving eyes, but Sarah was encouraged to think that he might be feeling more than the friendship-with-an-edge the rest of the world saw. If so, all she could say was that it was about bloody time.

 

             Her stomach grumbled, reminding her that lunch had consisted of coffee, and Stephen gave her a sidelong grin.

 

            “Hungry?” he asked.

 

            “You bet,” Sarah said. “Takeaway? There’s a nice Chinese somewhere around here.”

 

***

 

            The call on her mobile took Sarah by surprise, and almost caused her to drop her laptop bag, but the ringtone told her it was Stephen – the Spice Girls. She’d been fishing through his iPod and had nearly had hysterics when she discovered their greatest hits there. She managed to get a more secure hold on the bag and take the call, knowing it would be important.

 

            “Did you get it?” she demanded, without saying hello.

 

             “Yes.” Stephen sounded half out of his mind with excitement. “I passed! Sarah, I _passed_!”

 

            Sarah let out a shriek of excitement, which didn’t go down well with everyone else on Waterloo Bridge. “Stephen! That’s fantastic!”

 

            “I can’t believe it!” Stephen said, and he laughed breathlessly. “I _finally_ did it!”

 

            “This calls for a celebration,” Sarah said firmly, grinning wildly. “Dinner?”

 

            “Yeah, sure,” Stephen agreed. “Where?”

 

           “You choose, Dr Hart.”

 

           Stephen laughed again. She could almost hear him blushing, too. She thought he looked quite sweet when he blushed, and constantly took the piss out of him for it. “You know the Italian place on the high street, near my flat?”

 

           “Yeah, I know the one. What time?”

 

           “Seven-ish?”

 

           She glanced at her watch. “Sounds perfect. Meet you at your flat?”

 

           “That’d be great. See you then, Sarah.” There was a beaming smile in his voice as he rang off, and Sarah jumped up and down and squeaked ‘Yes!’ a few times for the relief of her feelings, attracting curious stares and not caring one bit.

 

           Then she hurried home and changed. She never dressed up for Stephen – she somehow doubted that he would notice – but this was a special occasion, and she was damned if she was turning up to a celebratory dinner in jeans and a scruffy t-shirt.

 

           When she arrived, Stephen was suitably impressed by the modicum of make-up and smart red silk dress she had put on. His jaw actually dropped when she accepted his offer of a cup of coffee before they went out because the restaurant could only manage a reservation for seven-thirty and took off her old trench-coat, revealing the dress.

 

           “Wow,” he said, honest appreciation in his eyes. “Sarah. You didn’t have to dress up.”

 

           She wrinkled her nose, shrugged and grinned, not least at the way his eyes had lingered on the deep V of the dress’s neckline. “We’re celebrating, aren’t we? I’d have brought a bottle, only...”

 

          “It’s fine.” Stephen grinned down at her. “You look amazing. I’m outclassed.”

 

         “You’re kidding,” Sarah snorted, and passed him two mugs from the cupboard above her head. “You look edible whatever you wear.”  


         She thought she’d made a horrible mistake for a moment, but then Stephen just blushed and smiled his shyest smile at her. It was a mark of how far he had come since they’d met that he was merely embarrassed.

 

         “To Dr Stephen Hart,” she declared when he handed over her coffee, and clinked her cup with his in a gentle parody of a toast; they caught each other’s eye, and laughed.

 

 

          Dinner was equally successful, a brilliant way to celebrate; they both had a terrific time, even if the waiters persisted under the delusion that they were dating, and when the proprietor found out what they were celebrating they were sent complimentary glasses of champagne, much to their mutual surprise.

 

         “To us,” Stephen said, touching the rim of his glass gently to hers, and okay, maybe Sarah understood the waiters’ preoccupations. “I couldn’t have done it without you, Sarah. Honest.”

 

         “Don’t be daft,” Sarah said gently, sensing that she was possibly a little tipsy, which explained the overwhelming wave of affection that had just swept over her. “You can do anything you want yourself.”

 

         He looked touched, and she didn’t know why. She reached over the table and squeezed his hand.

 

         “Thanks, Sarah,” Stephen said quietly, and at that inopportune moment, dessert arrived.

 

         Half an hour later, they’d paid the bill after a happy wrangle among themselves, and were outside in the cold. Sarah thought of the Tube journey home with misgiving, and wondered how Stephen would react to her asking to kip on his sofa - _or not his sofa_ , she thought, and indulged several very pleasant mental images – but when they got to his front door, those were not the words that came to her lips.

 

          “Stephen. Listen,” she said, and heard the awkward strain in her own voice. Stephen tensed, clearly having heard it too, and turned back to her. She stuffed her hands into the pockets of her trench-coat. “What you said earlier, that you wouldn’t have been able to do it without me. It’s not true, okay? I want to repeat that until you actually _believe_ me. Even if it takes me years. You are... you’re pretty special, Stephen. On your own account.” She glanced down at the toes of her heeled black boots and cleared her throat. “I’ve always thought that.”

 

         Stephen’s face softened and brightened.

 

         “Basically, I think you’re brilliant,” Sarah concluded, and stood on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek. The scratch of stubble against her lips sobered her up a little, and she started in horror at the delicate balance she had just blundered through. “And I’m drunk. I should go home.”

 

         “No. Wait. Sarah!” Stephen called after her, and she stopped halfway down the stairs and turned. He was leaning over the banister, a rather shy grin on his face. “Can we do that again?”

 

         Sarah blinked at him, then flicked her hair over her shoulder and made her way back up the stairs with as much dignity as she could muster. She stood in front of him, closer than she’d ever got to him before, and looked up into his face; he was raking his lower lip anxiously with his teeth, and he looked mildly nervous, but a tiny smile was hovering about his mouth. His blue eyes were full of appeal.

 

         It was fairly obvious that she was going to need to make the first move.

 

         “Well, then,” she said, in as business-like a tone as she could manage, and cupped his face in gentle hands. “Since you ask so nicely.”

 

***

 

          “What?” Sarah said in total puzzlement, emerging from the British Museum’s hidden administrative depths into Ursula’s tearful babbling. “Ursula? What’s going _on_ here?”

 

          “There’s something in the exhibit,” Ursula sobbed, sang-froid having obviously abandoned her. “Something in the Egypt exhibit. It’s killed Marion.”

 

          “It’s done _what_?” Sarah exclaimed, and a bunch of men in black came charging around the corner, headed up by a vague Scotsman with a gun. “Bloody hell!”

 

          Ursula was weeping on her shoulder. If Marion was really dead, Sarah couldn’t blame her in the slightest: neither of them had liked the woman, Sarah had cordially hated her, she’d put every obstacle possible in the way of Sarah completing her research and the book she was on the verge of publishing, but she was still _human_. Theoretically, anyway.

 

          Sarah patted Ursula’s back vaguely, and wondered if she was in shock. “What the hell is going _on_ here?”

 

         “Who are you?” the Scot demanded.

 

          “I’m Sarah Page. Dr Sarah Page,” Sarah added, feeling the need to assert herself. She indicated Ursula. “This is Ursula van Andel. We work here. Who are you?”

 

          “Oh,” the Scot said, without apparently feeling the need to volunteer any further details. His eyes were glued to something beyond Sarah. A roar interrupted the scene, and Sarah spun on her heel as best she could with Ursula clinging to her.

 

           “Oh my God,” she said faintly, and ever afterwards thought it was much to her credit that she didn’t scream. It was a crocodile – a very large crocodile – moving mostly on two legs. “ _Ammut_?”

 

           The mutant crocodile, or the Ancient Egyptian goddess, whichever, lowered its head and charged. There was a general scramble out of the way.

 

            A short girl with blonde hair and eyeliner verging on the panda-like helped Sarah heave Ursula into a doorway. “What did you say?” the blonde asked, revealing a perfectly normal and totally not-vague Londoner’s voice. Sarah decided that she could trust her.

 

           “Ammut.” Sarah cleared her throat. “A, um, an Ancient Egyptian goddess.”

 

           “Ah,” the blonde said, digesting this. “Right.” She looked at Sarah for a long moment, then nodded. “We might need to ask you some questions.”

 

           “Fine,” Sarah said, pushing the door behind her open and leaning Ursula, whose crying had reached the unattractive hiccupping stage, against a handy filing cabinet. “Is it okay if I ring my boyfriend and let him know I’ll be late?”

 

           “Yeah, sure. Just don’t mention the crocodile thing, okay?”

 

           “Who are you, anyway?” Sarah demanded, brought back to consciousness by the fact that normal people did not chase crocodiles around the British Museum with guns.

 

            “I’m Abby. Abby Maitland.” Abby pointed out the vague Scotsman. “That’s Professor Cutter.”

 

            “Never met a professor who carried a gun before,” Sarah said sceptically, giving Abby the fish-eye she used on people who started babbling excitably about pyramids being magic.

 

            “We’re... special,” Abby said uncomfortably, and went over to talk to ‘Professor Cutter’. Sarah called Stephen.

 

             He picked up on the first ring. “Hi, Sarah?”

 

            “Hey. Um, listen, I’ve kind of got a problem and I might be a bit late.”

 

            Stephen’s voice sharpened. “Are you okay?”

 

            “I’m fine.” Sarah cast a glance at Ursula. “Ursula’s having hysterics but she’s fine, too. It’s just... some people have come into the museum and they want to ask me a few questions.”

 

            “Who?”

 

            “I don’t know the organisation, but the woman I spoke to was called Abby Maitland,” Sarah volunteered, and was surprised by Stephen’s sharp intake of breath.

 

            “Don’t leave the museum, Sarah. Don’t go anywhere with them. Don’t trust anything they say. I’m coming, okay? It’s fine.”

 

            “All right,” Sarah said, bemused. She put her phone back in her pocket and dedicated herself to comforting Ursula as the least crazy thing to do in the circumstances.

 

            Fifteen minutes later, Stephen arrived, out of breath and in a temper. Sarah knew this because of the row that immediately sprang up between him and the alleged professor.

 

            “What the fuck are _you_ doing here?” the professor said.

 

            “I came,” Stephen said through gritted teeth, “to pick up my girlfriend. Who works here. What the fuck is going on, Cutter? Since when do you not evacuate civilians?”

 

            “Is that Stephen?” Ursula said in an astonished whisper.

 

             “Think so,” Sarah said, and stepped out into the main corridor. The relief on Stephen’s face was both highly gratifying and disturbing, and suggested that she’d been in much more danger than she’d realised. He crossed the hall and kissed her searchingly, startling her, because he wasn’t much on public displays of affection, and then hugged her tightly.

 

            “Are you okay?” he asked her again.

 

            “Yeah, I’m fine, I – just a bit shocked,” Sarah said. The look on his face, blindly terrified and consequently angry, worried her.

 

          “Didn’t know you had a girlfriend, Stephen,” the professor said. He went down several notches in Sarah’s esteem.

 

          Stephen’s face hardened. “Yeah, well, you’re not in a position to know, are you, Cutter?”

 

          “I thought you were still sleeping with my wife,” the professor spat.

 

           Sarah’s hand tightened hard on Stephen’s. “Then you thought wrong, didn’t you?” she said, a little louder than she meant to.

 

           “I haven’t seen her for three years,” Stephen snapped, “not since I chucked her out of my flat.”

 

            Cutter ignored both of them, and Sarah downgraded her opinion of him again. “Did you tell your new _girlfriend_ you slept with your best friend’s wife?”

 

            Abby Maitland looked appalled, and the men in black standing around looked uncomfortable. Sarah felt fury coming to the boil in her heart.

 

            “You really don’t sound like his best friend right now,” Sarah said before Stephen could get a word in. He’d gone pale and tight-lipped; he was shaking a bit.

 

            “I was. Once.” Cutter turned away, shaking his head. “You’re not worth my time. Get out, Stephen.”

 

            “Oi!” Sarah said, now seriously offended. “Who said you could talk like that? Do you work here? No, you don’t. Do I work here? Yes, I do. Am I the ranking museum employee here? Yes, I am. Stephen stays. And given the monstrous amount of disrespect you’ve just shown him I think you should call him Dr Hart.”

 

            Cutter turned back, probably mostly out of surprise. “So you got your PhD?”

 

            Stephen nodded jerkily, fingers very tight on Sarah’s. “No thanks to you or your bitch of a wife.” He put his arm around Sarah’s shoulders. “We’re leaving.”

 

           “Yup,” Sarah said, and then remembered Ursula. “Ursula!” she called.

 

            Ursula emerged timidly into the corridor, still pale and, though more composed than before, looking very unlike her usual confident self.

 

            “We’re going,” Sarah said, holding out a hand to her. “Come on.”

 

            “Lester’ll want to talk to you and Miss Page,” Cutter said to Stephen.

 

            “ _Dr_ Page,” Sarah said irritably. “And whoever Lester is, he can stick his talk where the sun doesn’t shine. After meeting you, Professor, I’m not interested in working with anyone connected to you. Bye.”

 

            She walked out of the Museum with her arm around her boyfriend’s waist and her hand wrapped around her best friend’s, and it was a toss-up as to which of them needed her most. On the whole, Sarah thought Stephen won.

 

 

            After a taxi-ride home and some soothing words, Ursula was tucked up in the spare bedroom of the house Sarah had inherited from her great-aunt and which she and Stephen had just finished doing up; her great-aunt had thoroughly approved of Stephen, except for the fact that he hadn’t married her favourite great-niece yet. Stephen stood in the kitchen, nursing a cup of coffee and a stormy expression.

 

            “Coffee for you on the side,” he said, and disappeared into his mug.

 

            Sarah went and fetched the coffee, which was made exactly the way she liked it. “Thanks. Stephen...”

 

            “Listen,” Stephen said roughly. “What Cutter said – some of it was true.”  
  
            “So tell me about it,” Sarah said.

 

            Stephen nodded, and took a ragged breath. “I was - it was at CMU, Central Metropolitan University. I did my BSc there and my MSc, and then I started a PhD. Helen Cutter was my supervisor.” He was gulping air between sentences as if he was drowning, and Sarah began to be seriously concerned. She was already very worried about the part Helen Cutter was going to play in this story. “I was a stupid kid. I believed everything she said. She told me Nick – her husband – didn’t understand her, told me they were separated, told me all kinds of things. She had me on a fucking string, Sarah, and then Nick came back from his sabbatical and she broke it off. She just wanted – a _toy_. And then she vanished. And I waited for her, waited with Nick, fell in love with him along the way but never did anything about it, and... then she came back.

 

            “We were involved with – a project. A government thing. Secret. Helen persuaded me of – things – about this project. She lied to me again. And I believed her. And then... she’d told Nick about the affair by this time, he was furious, he kept pushing me away, didn’t trust me any more even though it was Helen who spent all her time hurting him... well, I tried to talk to Nick once too often, and he punched me and fired me. And I came to London, looking for a fresh start.” Stephen’s head hung and his shoulders were hunched. He looked defeated; Cutter had knocked the stuffing out of him, the bastard. “I’m sorry, Sarah. I should’ve told you before. I’ll understand, if...”

 

            “Hey,” Sarah said, set down her coffee-mug, took his away from him and put it down on the worktop he was leaning against. She went and stood right in front of him, pressed herself against him, and made him meet her eyes. “You’re thinking about this wrong, Stephen. I can’t believe you took that git at his word when he blamed you. _Think_. Your PhD supervisor, someone in a position of authority over you who was supposed to safeguard your academic welfare and assess you objectively, seduced you – and you’ve spent the past, what, _eleven years_ thinking that was _your fault_?”

 

            Tears were leaking from Stephen’s eyes. He shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut, and she put her arms around him.

 

            “It’s okay,” she whispered, “it’s okay,” and kissed the side of his neck, running her hands up and down his back as soothingly as she knew how. “I love you, idiot. It’s okay.”

 

            Stephen wrapped his arms around her and squeezed tightly, burying his face in her hair. He was crying properly now, and Sarah felt sympathetic tears start in her own eyes. After a moment, she pulled gently away from him, and he sniffed and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. Sarah would complain about that, but she did it too.

 

            “What would I do without you?” Stephen murmured, smiling waterily down at her.

 

            “I don’t know,” Sarah said, and smiled back at him, stroking his ridiculous cheekbones with her thumbs and wiping away a few stray tears. “Spontaneously combust? Become a monk? Run away to the Amazon to hunt a rare species of invisible bird?”

 

            Stephen sniggered, face brightening a little, and planted a kiss on her forehead. She leaned against his chest and hugged him tightly. “Come on. Let’s go to bed.”

 


End file.
